I can’t stand the ‘sign of peace’. I cheerfully admit that I am probably wrong about this. My dislike of it says more about my limitations than any objective truth.

Conclaves of terrifyingly rigorous and spiritually impeccable scholars are satisfied that they have recovered an important strand of worship in the first Christian communities which has powerful contemporary resonance.

Many Christians find it a continually moving expression of the solidarity and mutual support to be found within congregations of believers.

But I still can’t stand it.

This is a good example of the way in which different backgrounds of personality and upbringing can cause people of the same professed faith to disagree sharply.

This does not matter much in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and respect. But the lack of mutual tolerance and respect has been melancholy feature of the history of Christianity.

Today, this is often expressed in relation to matters which can hardly be described as first-order priorities – such as whether to have the ‘sign of peace’. There are those who will not come to church unless the service is to be found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and others who will not come to church if it is. Much as I love the Book of Common Prayer, even I can’t pretend that I think that its use (as opposed to Common Worship) is a matter of first-order priority.

By comparison with the great debates of the past, these are questions of the utmost triviality. But at least people do not actually get killed as a result.

The great controversies of history concerned questions of dogma and doctrine.

 Some definition of terms is needed. These will do but they are not especially precise or definitive:

Dogma: doctrines essential to Christian faith by universal assent.

Doctrine: the authoritative teaching of the church.

Theology: the views of individual thinkers on the nature of God.

            By this standard, some think that only the divinity of Christ and the associated Trinity can properly qualify as dogmas.

            Examples of doctrine are: original sin; substitutionary atonement; the sufficiency of scripture; predestination and election; purgatory; justification by faith; the nature and number of sacraments; Papal infallibility.

For an idea to survive, flourish, and develop it needs to find expression in an institution: whether it is the Royal Horticultural Society, the Rugby Football Union, or the Church. That institution will define itself and therefore its members by the creation of purposes and rules. To be cohesive and effective, orthodoxy is imposed.

            For example, to have a proper game of Rugby, it matters whether a team’s numbers are limited to 15 and whether a player is allowed to throw the ball forwards.

            What is true for a game, is far more so for a community of believers where what is stake is the meaning of life and salvation of souls.

            Controversies have raged among Christians from the very start. We read in the Acts of the Apostles of the terrific rows in the early Jesus movement (before it broke away from Judaism) about the terms on which Gentiles could be accepted.

            There were the seismic battles in the 4^th century when the Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicea [325 AD] to settle the question of the relationship between Jesus and God the father (Christology).

The major controversy was between the followers of Arius (who thought that Jesus was of like substance with the father: homoiousios) and the followers of Athanasius (who thought that Jesus was of the same substance as the father: homoousios). There was only one letter but a world between them.

Athanasius won. As a result, we have the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the doctrine of the Trinity (which, it should be understood, developed in the 4^th century).

This raises the question of how can such disputes be resolved? From where is authority derived?

The conventional analysis of the sources of authority identifies these strands:

      Scripture

      Tradition

      Reason

      Experience.

Immediately, one can see that different Christian groupings and individuals will give different weight to each of these elements.

In reverse order:

      Charismatic Pentecostalists emphasise their direct experience of the work of the Spirit

      Sceptical, contemporary liberals look to reason

      Roman Catholics give priority to obedience to the Magisterium of the Church and its centuries of traditional wisdom

      Protestants tend to look to scripture

In history this has given rise to exclusive claims to truth and the scandal of mutual antagonism between Christians.

 As the factions warred (especially when those factions were associated with ethnic or political identity and economic self-interest), much blood has been spilled.

Look at the five “great fundamentals” identified by the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association which was founded in the USA in 1909:

      The literal inerrancy of scripture

      The virgin birth

      Substitutionary atonement

      Bodily Resurrection

      Christ’s divinity and imminent return

Many sincere, thoughtful Christians would not consider these “fundamental” or would say, “It depends what you mean by …”

Compare them with the Rev Professor Keith Ward’s formulation of fundamental beliefs:

      The existence of a creator God

      The revelation of the unlimited love of God shown in the life and death of Jesus

      The hope that all might share in the redemption of the world that is accomplished by God in and through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit.

But why does any of this matter?

It matters because the church in Western Europe is fighting for its life. Its portrayal by an ignorant and sceptical media is a parody of what Christianity is actually like. “Dogma” has become a term of denigration. It is assumed that to engage with the church one has to believe 243 bizarre and contradictory propositions before breakfast.

            I have come across a number of thoughtful people, who are sympathetic to the church, who are put off because they think that you cannot be Christian unless you believe that every word in the Bible is literally true or because they cannot say the Apostles’ Creed without crossing their fingers.

Karl Rahner, German Catholic Theologian [1904-84], beautifully expressed the answer to this in his Theological Investigations:

The clearest formulations, the most sanctified formulas, the classic condensations of the centuries-long work of the Church in prayer, reflection and struggle concerning God’s mysteries: all these derive their life from the fact that they are not end but beginning, not goal but means, truths which open the way to ever greater Truth.

In relation to doctrine, how should we approach the questions which even Oundle School’s illustrious old boy, Professor Richard Dawkins, struggles to answer: why and how is there something rather than nothing? And what, if anything, has the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth got to do with it?

 Julian of Norwich was a 14^th century hermit and mystic. Her name came from the church in Norwich to which she was attached -  which is still standing though much damaged in the last war.

The theme of her famous book Showings or Revelations of Divine Love is the love of God as she came to understand it through a series of visions she experienced during a serious illness.

What she wrote, as she sought to penetrate the meaning of these visions, applies as much to us as we try to penetrate the meaning of doctrines concerning the nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ:

What? Do you wish to understand your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was his meaning.